what I meant. How long did the others wait for their dragons to get enchanted?”
He frowned. “What do you mean by enchanted ?”
“C’mon, Master Longwei. Don’t any of you see what the Dent is about? It puts the dragon under some spell. It’s not real.”
“Don’t say that Elena. I’m sure that’s what it looks like to you, but the Dent isn’t like that.”
“Yeah, well then explain it to me, so that I can understand.”
“I can’t, as I simply don’t know what it is.”
“You’re three thousand years old, surely someone must have said something.”
“No one has, Elena.”
I stared at him for a few seconds and then it hit me. It was so clear. “Why do you think that is? Because they don’t know themselves, which only tells me it’s not real.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Yeah, well I do.”
“Do you want me to take you back or would you like a couple more days off?”
I squinted this time. “What?”
“You seem like you could use a break.”
“No, I refuse to run away.”
“Okay, then let’s go back.”
“Just like that. No scolding, nothing?”
“You want me to scold?”
“Well you have all the right. I left without you knowing where I was.”
He laughed. “Jimmy phoned, I knew you were safe.”
I smiled. “Traitor.”
“He just cares about you, after all you are his business partner, Elena. What you did was the best thing you ever could do for that boy.”
“It was the right thing to do.”
“Let’s go, before others see that you are getting away with this and then chaos will break out.”
I giggled and looked away as he took off his robe. When the plop sound came I found the most beautiful golden dragon I’d only seen once in the Museum of Etan staring at me. He was big, looked extremely friendly, kind with two long sprouts of hair hanging down from his chin. It made him look like a dragon version of Mr. Miyagi.
“What are you staring at?”
“Never saw a Fin-Tail,” I replied.
“Well, that explains the admiration.” He bowed his head and I giggled.
I grabbed his paw and noticed he had fur mixed with golden scales at the bottom of his paws. The fur was so soft and he smelled of sunshine.
He lifted off gracefully and we landed right in front of the gate.
“Next time, when you feel like it’s getting too much, let me know, Elena.”
“Thank you, Master Longwei.”
I smiled at his dragon figure one last time, just before it started to shrink, and looked away as I knew that image would have scarred me for the rest of my life.
I was happy that there was no sign of Blake as I walked up the stairs to my room.
Becky and Sammy both lay on their beds. Their other halves were missing as I entered our room. Becky just stared up from the novel we had to read for Latin and raised her eyebrows slightly. “You enjoy Longbottoms?”
“You enjoy your flight?” I said in a very sarcastic tone.
“Ouch, okay didn’t expect that.”
I giggled.
“Did you really throw my brother into the air?” Sammy asked.
I looked at her.
“We heard via Peter who was also on his way out. Professor Vladimir laughed so much when he told Alex.”
“He made me furious, okay,” I said and looked at Sammy.
“Elena,” she sighed.
“Don’t, Sammy. I don’t want to hear it. I was this close today to saying those words.”
“You can’t,” she begged again.
“Well, he doesn’t make it easy for me either, and to be honest, I really don’t want to spend the entire night talking about that idiot of a brother of yours.”
“Okay, fine, subject changed. I just wanted to know how on earth you managed to do that.”
“I don’t know. I just felt powerful and took it out on him.”
She smiled. “I’ve never seen him that upset before.”
“Yeah, well, then you should have seen me.”
Both girls laughed. “Thank heavens it didn’t happen in our room.” Becky left her two cent comment.
We all burst out into a choir of laughter. The rest of the night I
Debby Herbenick, Vanessa Schick